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Times have been tough for many Canadians but thankfully we have Prime Minister Harper to keep us afloat or is it aloof? All I see is a scripted tight lipped dance of deception. The Prime Minister keeps his ministers on leash with such consistency they can only foul where they walk. Parliament is becoming putrid.

Minister of Veteran Affairs Julian Fantino according to Wikipedia was a security guard, serves with Criminal Intelligence and is currently preoccupied with ministerial moronity.

With one in six full-time members of the Canadian Forces experiencing symptoms of mental health or alcohol related disorders, propaganda has become a prescription. Veterans and their calls to Fantino are often not returned and even individuals who show up in person are sidestepped. Accountability In Action; all we need is a sign on the road. Fantino closed 8 regional Veteran Affairs offices and pumped it into propaganda. The conservatives have increased their advertising to veterans by about $4 million. TV therapy.

One would assume a minister responsible for veteran affairs would be slightly familiar with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) but what is the political gain in that? PTSD includes a disturbance of day-to-day activities and avoidance yet we have the conservatives dishing out information during the most expensive periods of Stanley Cup playoff hockey. Individuals with PTSD are unlikely to be dialed in to Don Cherry.

Many who are experiencing PTSD and other symptoms are uninterested in hockey let alone the commercials. It makes about as much sense as printing this propaganda on Cheerios cereal boxes. Not everyone eats Cheerios and fewer still read the box.

Canadians are not stupid. It is not difficult to see that this government is more interested in promoting itself than assisting veterans. Who benefits from increasing advertising by $4 million while cutting veterans programs themselves? It’s basically a going out of business advertisement without the bargains.

Fantino defended the spending increase in advertisements as an attempt to communicate directly with veterans. I’m not one to sidestep stupidity but that one seems best left as it was uttered.

I don’t know much about the military but from what I can glean from this government’s actions, veterans are issued TV’s for communication and are without telephones or mail service. I’m a simple man but when I want someone to know something I often use our precarious postal service or pick up the phone. But then Canadians wouldn’t see what a great job the conservatives are actually not doing. If this government was doing a fair job they wouldn’t have to figure out ways of confusing Canadians.

Spending $ 103,649.00 on promoting Tweets does little good to veterans who haven’t a Twitter account. This government is more interested in reaching out to those who haven’t yet been betrayed. You’re an idiot if you need 144 characters to message a hero. It is unfortunate for all Canadians that we are lead to believe by this government more than we are led.

We just passed a huge tribute to World War 1. The same heart that took Vimy, stormed Dieppe and battled Afghanistan. We mustn’t pay tribute only to one conflict or simply the fallen. It is a slap in the face to others who withstood and endured. The conservative answer to selflessness is self promotion and pitiful politics. We must support these brave men and women whenever and wherever they need a hand. We do not leave these men and women injured in the field of battle but we are doing just that at home. It is the epitome of disrespect and I am ashamed that the conservative government thinks more of self promotion than the sacrifices these individuals have made. The blind can see and they can also vote.

For further reading search my blog for “A Disservice To Common Sense.”

Keys; have you ever thought much about them? We seldom carry just one unless we pin them to our bathing suit at the Y.M.C.A. We carry them in our pockets or around our necks these days. Some people clip them to their sides, some spin them on their fingers and fidget with them, but have you ever thought about what they mean? I know what they mean- power. They say I have control over this set of doors or this vehicle or this classroom or this part of the institution. I hate the sound of keys. I learned to hate them in jail. Every time I heard keys it meant my keeper was coming. He was coming to wake me or take me to court or to feed me or deliver a new inmate or to order me back into my cell. It wasn’t all bad when my keeper came, sometimes she was good looking, for a guard, or she brought the mail or took me to a visit or as I said a meal. But she always delivered control.

If you’ve never been in jail you will not understand how loud keys can be and how attuned you become to them. Firstly a jailer’s keys are as big as your hand so when they hit each other or fumble in the lock you really hear the brass. Jails are empty of anything that absorbs sound so everything carries and seems louder than sound on the outside. Secondly when you’re in jail you always want to know where or when the jailer is coming. They usually do a “walk about” every half-hour (there are no clocks or watches in jail) and you could hear them coming from the keys hitting their sides. If you wanted to share a smoke or worse, you timed it well but still “kept six” or listened and watched for a guard as they could show up at anytime to deliver someone to or from court or the nurse or a visit.

The morning I came back from escaping to the Sarnia hospital, I opened the doors coming into the jail myself as they were electronically locked. I had a great sense of power to be able to open those two doors on my own. They were heavy but I know I flung them open as I shambled through cuffed and shackled in my hospital booties.

Now when I hear keys I still hear control. You see I still don’t often have keys in my hands and I have to turn them back in to people with many more keys than I. They have keys to my room, to outside doors, to medication drawers, to shower rooms, kitchens, etcetera. Even when I went to school I would cringe when the teacher threw her keys on her desk. I liked her but she had keys; keys to freedom like a car and a house and a mailbox, a bike, even the school. Not me, I had only one key, a key to my brother’s bike. But hear this, no one has felt as free and as happy on a bicycle as I have on many occasions on that bike. The bike is barely worth locking up but to wear that key around my neck is priceless.